Born in Ethiopia but grew up here in Cincinnati for 26 years. I've been disappointed countless times over those years. The amount of times I had hope it was a major let down. Seeing the Bengals go to the Super Bowl in my lifetime was more than a treat. 

Although the Bengals didn't win it was a special time to be alive in Cincinnati, Oh. The amount of buzz around the city was infectious. The lights on most huge corporate buildings in the downtown area had orange and black lit up in subtle and big ways. 

I wanted to go for a more griddy harder feeling to this 1080x1080 poster. 

Process:

I first found the most influential people on the team this year. I looked up images on Google (I don't own these photos). Used Adobe Photoshop to cut out the images. I then opened up Adobe Indesign and found the color codes for the Bengals color and put that as the main background color. Then used Adobe Indesign to apply gradients on the images of the players so it wouldn't look boxy. I then applied all those images to the right side in a downward zig zag way. I then added text to the left side, the year and then wrote the teams name and competition below. Something I thought would be special would be a quote from head coach Zac Taylor. At the end I used the special effects tool to create those splatters of white and black throughout the photo.

Exported as png.